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Proteomics

So, term has started. Lab Rat is out of the lab and back in the lecture theatre, which means probably less blog posts as I try to get through my rather scary reading list (thankfully it is made up mostly of papers but there's still rather a lot of it).

The first topic for this term is Proteomics; the study of the structure and function of proteins within a cell and living proof that adding the term -omics onto something gets you exciting amounts of funding. Proteomics is turning out to be fairly interesting, the paper I've just read, for example (here if you can get to it) talks about how large scale proteomics was used to compare the proteins in the malaria parasite P. falciparum in its different states of growth. The idea is to find a protein in one stage that isn't in the body naturally and then target it to kill off the parasite. Also it's really interesting finding out which proteins are expressed when, and which ones the parasite turns off at different stages for various reasons.